This invention generally relates to crowd sourced wireless networks, and more specifically, to improved security in crowd sourced wireless networks.
Crowd sourced networking, in which wireless networks are shared by multiple users, has become common. The shared network may be a public network or a restricted network that is accessible to, for example, customers in a store, or people in a particular location such as a hotel or airport.
Individuals who own or administer their own wireless networks, for example in their home or residence, may also share their networks with others. Typically, in order to allow access to such a network, the owner or administrator of the network give a password to a person and that person inputs the password using his or her own computer in order to log onto the network.
Systems and procedures have been recently developed that allow people to share their wireless networks, or wireless networks to which they are connected, with other people without requiring these other people to input manually any password to log onto the networks. With this technology, if a particular social media relationship or connection exists between two users, the computer system of a first user may automatically grant to the computer system of the second user access to a wireless network that the first user owns or is connected to.